“All those people who seek to control the behaviour of large numbers of other people work on the experiences of those other people. Once people can be induced to experience a situation in a similar way, they can be expected to behave in similar ways. Induce people all to want the same thing, hate the same things, feel the same threat, then their behaviour is already captive – you have acquired your consumers or your cannonfodder” (R.D. Laing, 1971: 80).
Came across this powerful quote from R.D. Laing’s Politics of Experience while planning/writing an article for a chapter in a book called Boundaries of Self & Reality Online (Jayne Gackenbach ed.). The piece is provisionally titled “The Divided Selfie: The Politics of [User] Experience in the Age of Social Media.”
VIRALITY 